Hamstertrap

Once again my hamster went mising, and given his stellar survival rate in my house full of lazy predators, I decided to be proactive and set a trap for him. A simple bucket trap can be made by smearing peanut butter in the bottom of a bucket and then stacking books or other objects up to make steps to the top.

Of course, as soon as I set it up I found the hamster in his vast network of cages, right where he should be. I did, however, catch something.

Little Dogs.

We go to the designated off-leash dog beach regularly so that Awesomedog can chase the tennis ball to his heart's content. This happens pretty much every time we go.

Does it look like that big dog just wandered over to 'say hi' and Tinydog snapped at it totally unprovoked? Somebody obviously doesn't read dog body language very well. Let me show you what you missed.

A dog with good manners would have picked up on Tinydog's desire to be left alone already.

At this point the other dog is either deliberately ignoring Tinydog's attempts to communicate, or just has no idea how to read a dog that small.

The oncoming dog is moving in a straight line with ears and tail standing up, this is not a friendly hello, it's an "I'm gonna check you out and there's nothing you can do about it."

So neither Tinydog, myself, or the other dog are surprised when this happens:

My chihuahua is not Cujo. He is not vicious, and he is not attacking unprovoked. He actually has pretty good manners, and he only snaps at other dogs when they ignore every single lesser attempt to communicate that he wants some space.

What kind of dog?

If you live in an area with a lot of chihuahuas or a lot of people with Mexican heritage, you are probably aware that a lot of people from Mexico absolutely love chihuahuas and enjoy pointing them out to their children when they would ignore any other type of dog. I imagine this is somewhat similar for dogs with other readily-identifiable nationalities, and I am simply not around when someone from Australia spots a kelpie or an Australian cattle dog. In my mind Irish people like to point out Irish setters and Irish terriers, and people from Japan are quick to point out akitas  to their kids. (I could be completely wrong about this and it's just a chihuahua thing...)  Anyway, this morning we passed a probably-Hispanic guy and matching kid.

I've been laughing my ass off about this all day.

You'll understand when you have chihuahuas.

I was at a street fair when I saw a lady with two chihuahuas that were barking at everything.

And I thought "Hey, I understand. I have a chihuahua, I've been there."

 It reminded me of the kind of thing my sister and other parents say about their kids.

The In-Laws.

My tinydog was sort of a souvenir from attending my husband's family reunion. The reunion was on the family farm, and Tinydog found me while I was trying to make friends with the barn cats.

Tinydog was immediately convinced he belonged with me, and followed me everywhere for the rest of the weekend.

He still had all his baby teeth, and weighed about 4 pounds. I figured somebody must be missing him, but I couldn't find any farmhands on the property. It was 105 degrees outside, and there was no food or water left outside for him, either. I brought him to meet the relatives.

My father-in-law is a fairly normal coastal southern California guy. His family is a little more...rural.

They're also southern Baptist preachers. All of them. Men. Women. Children.

As extremely liberal progressive educated people, we have to watch what we say around them.

We only see them a couple of times a year, which is kind of nice because I can use the practice at shutting up.

Anyway, the relatives didn't think I needed to worry about Tinydog being, well, a tiny dog.

(Tinydog did not go back outside, and when we left we took Tinydog with us. He stills follows me everywhere.)